Fit and she knows it!

Mainz is a lovely town and doesn’t it know it. They feel a little like they don’t have to make an effort because people will come anyway. A prime example is the tourist office in town. They weren’t particularly helpful and there is virtually nothing that you can get for free that tells you anything at all about the city. If you want maps, guides, even just something that tells you when things are open, you have to pay for it.

I arrived in the early morning after a very early start from Heidelberg and headed through town to my hotel which was near the river. Luckily it was easier to find that it looked on the map and it only took 20 minutes to get there. I searched for an ATM on the way and was highly unsuccessful. Most banks in Mainz seem to have taken to those ATMs in little room that require you to swipe your card to get into them. And unfortunately the travel cards that I have don’t work on them. So rather than hang around looking suspicious and waiting for someone else to go into them, I continued on. I did eventually find some that just required you to push a button to get into the door (they are on the side of market place opposite the side entrance to the cathedral).

There was a huge market in the square next to the Dom selling fruit, meat, flowers, and other produce. It all looked like really nice stuff. I think it’s there three times a week. After lugging my bags up all the stairs in the hotel (why are all the single rooms in Germany at the very top of a windy narrow staircase?) and opening the window to try and get rid of the smell of cigarettes (I couldn’t tell if it was the room or if it was just from having been around the owner who smelled like an ashtray), I headed back out to try and see some stuff. I knew I was in for a full day as I only had the one day to see everything. I dropped into the tourist office and departed with my paid for guide to all the main churches in the inner city. It’s quite a good guide but comes in German only. It lists the opening times and regular services of all the churches and gives a brief history and a bit about their design. There is more information on the wall of most of the churches as well (signs in German only). I decided to start with the Dom as it is the biggest of them all and I was keen to see the museum collection that they have in the cloister. Unfortunately it’s been shut for the last 2 months for cleaning and refurbishment so I couldn’t see it anyway. It’s meant to reopen next week sometime. It seems that they haven’t been advertising the closure anywhere as lots of people headed out to see it as well as me. The church is really quite large though it’s not as big inside as it appears to be from the outside. There are lots of buildings built right up to the sides of the church. Some are used for various things by the church and others are shops. So it does surprise you when you walk in the church isn’t as big as you expect.

It's the cathedral's 1000th birthday this year so I assume that they'll be having some events later in the year (I think the actual birthday is in August). Of course like all good churches it's a mixture of styles as each new bishop has added his own little bit in the style of the day. The basic structure of the inside is still mostly romanesque though with some gothic looking additions. The columns are lined with the gravestones of various early bishops that were moved from the crypt at some stage. There are some impressively ornate gravestones. I feel some of the bishops missed the bit about men of God being humble. The outside of the Cathedral has been worked on several times by the look of it and there are sections that almost have a fairytale castle feel to them.

After leaving the church by one of the other exits, I headed around the building and into the square behind it, heading for St Johns. It used to be part of the cathedral complex but is now a Protestant church. On the way, I had the pleasure of getting to see four grown men dressed in polar bear costumes dancing together in the square. They even had a song that I feel they had written with their own crayon. I think that they were advertising a protest about something to do with global warming.

St John’s was a fairly ordinary church with a nice barrel ceiling. They were having a free organ concert though which I sat and listened to for a little bit. The church has very good acoustics (I suspect because it’s not as ornate as some of the others) so has a lot of organ concerts and choirs perform there. From there I headed on a loop to see some of the other churches in town.  I was lucky that lots of them were open as it seems they usually aren’t in the off season. I assume it is probably something to do with lent as it seems to be a big thing here.

Next stop was Augustinerkirche which is not particularly attractive from the outside and has been built in by the other buildings which is always a shame. Inside it’s the whole rococo nightmare when too much is never enough. They haven’t quite gilded everything that was stationary but they have tried. Here there was also someone playing the organ but it sounded like they were learning a new piece for something. It was very nice though.

The next church I visited was St Ignatius and it is stunning. You know how sometimes you walk into a building, and it can be any type of building, and just feel like it works. This church is like that. It’s got the right balance of dark and light (even on a grey day), it’s proportions all look perfect and it’s decorated but not to the excess of some of the other Mainz churches. Inside is a mixture of classical lines with baroque detailing and it really works. The front of the church is more classical looking with columns and statues in niches.

From here, I headed up to see St Stephans which is one of the most visited churches in town. It’s famous for it’s blue windows which were made throughout the 20^th century by a Jewish glass worker. The church itself is much much older and was first built on the site in 990. It was rebuilt in Gothic style in the 15^th century but has had a couple of facelifts since then. It’s quite odd when you first go into the church as all the windows (with one or two small exceptions) are made of blue glass and it gives the church quite a hue. I’m sorry to say that it did remind me a bit of those toilets where they put the blue lights to stop junkies. Strangely your eyes get used to it and after a few minutes it doesn’t seem anywhere near as blue. Many of the windows just have swirling patterns but the ones at the front of the church have various stories from the bible in them (though in a fairly abstract kind of way). You can also visit the gothic cloister next to the church which is also quite lovely. It has a garden in the middle of it which must be stunning in the summer. There is a small handout about the cloister in the church which gives a bit of history of some of the graves in the garden. The man who designed the original gothic church is buried here with his wife and son. There is also part of one of the bells that was damaged during the war. I think that this one is worth going to see but it was definitely not the favourite of my churches in Mainz.

From here I headed towards the Roman ruins that were marked on my map only to find that they have sort of been turned into a carpark and a hotel. Maybe they look more like roman ruins if you go in a bit further but I really couldn’t be bothered so headed on instead. There is a lovely terrace out the front of the hotel but unfortunately the lovely views of the old town are spoiled by the hideous modern apartments that have been built in front of them. It is incredible what town planners will let people do.

I headed for St Emmerans which wasn’t open, so I chucked a left and made for St Peters instead. On the way, I passed another church which has now been made into part of the museum of natural history. According to the booklet, St Peters is the nicest rococo church on the Rhein and it does take tackiness to a whole new level. It’s almost like being inside a cupcake when you walk in a it’s all white and pale pink and bright gold. Not really my cup of tea but it did have good lines and the ceiling paintings of the life of St Peter are very well done.

I continued on past a whole lot of government buildings that used to be palaces to the large Christuskirche which is in the middle of a traffic island as you head towards the bridge over the river. It’s a stunning Renaissance style building from the outside with huge windows and lots of pillars. It’s truly lovely to look at until you go inside. I don’t know whether the architect just didn’t know what he was doing or whether someone has done additions to the inside since it was originally built but it’s just hideous. There is a gallery in the main church that looks like it was added on by dodgy brothers builders and it completely destroys the lines of the main pillars in the church. Even the windows don’t seem like they are in the right place. And for such a large building the church seems cramped inside. It really is an awful shame that they would do something like this. So I didn’t hang around for long and headed instead to some of the old palaces on the waterfront. They are now mostly government buildings but there are some museums in them as well.

St Christophers is a ruin that has been left as a memorial to the Second World War. It was bombed and burned to the ground. It’s the oldest church in Mainz (and that makes it really really old) though most of what remains is from the 13^th century. They’ve had to add to parts of the building to keep it standing and they have built as small prayer room at one end but otherwise it’s as it was after the bombing. It makes it even more incredible to look at the other churches in Germany and think that most of them looked like this after the war and yet they rebuilt them exactly in a matter of years.

St Quentins was the final church on my list and it’s another one of the churches that has been built into the buildings around it. I assume that land in the old town must have been scarce so they have had to squeeze some of the churches in. So was done with churches for the day so headed instead to the Gutenberg museum. Guttenberg was born and lived in Mainz for most of his life so is a bit of a town favourite. The museum isn’t cheap (5 euros) but does have quite a large collection. There is some English labeling but not for all the exhibitions but most of the stuff is fairly self explanatory. There are lots of old books from before the development of printing, during early printing with wood cuts and the like, and after the development of printing using moveable letters and a press. There are three copies of the Guttenberg bibles that were printing in the first few years after he developed his press. They also have other books known to have been printed at the same time. There are sections on printing in other cultures. The Chinese developed printing techniques centuries before the west but never developed a printing press for mass production. Instead they carved individual wood cuts that they then pressed by hand. It must have been incredibly difficult writing backwards in Chinese characters. The book binding section I’m sure is interesting but there is nothing written in English at all. It is a similar story with the section on the development of the modern day newspaper. It took me a couple of hours to go around the whole museum and look at everything.

Afterwards, I’d pretty much had enough of walking around looking at things and decided to head back to the hotel for a rest. After an hour of lying down, I was rejuvenated enough to go back out and find somewhere to get something to eat. Unfortunately, Mainz is one of those towns where nothing opens until 6 for dinner and nowhere was open yet. So I wandered for a bit longer until the restaurant I’d chosen opened it’s doors. Lucky I was there at 6 or I would never have got a table. I was lucky to get one that had been reserved for 7.15 so settled in to order and eat quickly. I hadn’t thought about it being a Saturday night but I think that it’s a popular place too. And I can see why as the pizza that I had was very nice and the place is quite attractive too.

So I was back at the hotel by just after 7 and settled in for a night of watching TV (they had cable so I was able to watch CNN for a while – I lasted longer than usual because they had Rosemary Church doing the newscasting so she didn’t have the usual American accents that irritate me so much on CNN). The next morning I was up and out and on the train to Koblenz by 8.30. I don’t think that I missed much by only having the one day in Mainz. I would have liked to see the Dom Museum but it wasn’t open again until Tuesday (which is a little long to wait) so I guess I’ll have to come back for that one.